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Huntington County Humane Shelter animals, IBC vet-tech students are traveling companions

Autumn Trombley (left), of Jonesville, MI, holds a dog, “Lenny,” while Faith Lenard, of New Haven, checks his heart rate at the Huntington County Humane Shelter on Tuesday, Jan. 6. Trombley and Lenard are students at the Vet Tech Institute at International Business College, in Fort Wayne, which sends students to the shelter once a month to look after the animals and gain real-world experience.
Autumn Trombley (left), of Jonesville, MI, holds a dog, “Lenny,” while Faith Lenard, of New Haven, checks his heart rate at the Huntington County Humane Shelter on Tuesday, Jan. 6. Trombley and Lenard are students at the Vet Tech Institute at International Business College, in Fort Wayne, which sends students to the shelter once a month to look after the animals and gain real-world experience. Photo by Steve Clark.

Originally published Jan. 26, 2015.

Cats and dogs from the Huntington County Humane Shelter and students from the Vet Tech Institute at International Business College, in Fort Wayne, are traveling companions.

Three times a year, those students make the trip from Fort Wayne to Huntington, where they select animals from the shelter to take part in the school’s veterinary technology program. Arrival at the school doesn’t signal the end of the trip, though, as the animals and students then embark together on a journey of a different sort – one that sees the latter party go from greenhorns in the program to, eventually, graduates.

For a student to receive a proper education in the program, it’s essential that animals be at the school, says Kristin Husband, program director of the Vet Tech Institute.

“While the animals are here, we vaccinate them, we test them – different blood tests – we spay/neuter,” she explains. “We basically do anything that they need to make them healthy. Then the students get to practice restraint and blood draws and things like that – what they’re going to do in a veterinary practice.”

The school and shelter partnered up in 2006. As a Huntington County resident and a former vet tech in Huntington, Husband approached the shelter upon joining IBC about supplying the school with animals, which must come from a registered shelter.

The animals selected for inclusion in the program all must fit a certain profile, says Husband.

“We have to make sure that they are going to work in our program as far as, they’re going to get along with other dogs, they’re going to be able to be in the kennel, they cannot be aggressive or anything like that,” she says. “We have to have pretty laidback dogs so the students can learn from them.”

The school’s big trips to the shelter, when it acquires some 20 cats and as many dogs, occur in January, April and July.

Those trips, however, are far from the only ones the school makes to the shelter, Husband notes.

“Once a month, I will take a group of students and we go to the shelter and we will go through and assess their animals,” she says. “We vaccinate them, we do physical exams, we will heartworm test or leukemia test the cats, we will de-worm them, nail trim, ear cleanings – anything that we can take care of, we take care of for the shelter.

“And so we go through and do that to all the animals basically to make them more adoptable.”

Students have even performed more complex services for the shelter, such as surgeries, states Jean Wilson, the shelter’s operations manager.

“We’ve had a lot of animals that have came in that have had… either a broken leg or something that is treatable, but with our funds, we can’t afford to treat them,” she says. “They’ve helped us quite a few times. They’ve taken a couple kittens that have had broken legs. Not only have they amputated or splinted that leg, the kids have adopted them out up there pretty quick.”

Adoption is the endgame for cats and dogs in the 18-month vet tech program just as graduation is for its students. Animals in the program are transitioned out of it at the end of each term – and frequently into the waiting arms of graduates, who end up forming attachments with
their traveling companions.

“The animals are all up for adoption after they leave our program and it’s kind of first come, first serve,” says Husband. “Most of our animals go to the students. I mean, they fall in love with them right away. They work with them every day.”

“That’s the great ending,” reflects Wilson. “(The animals) all get adopted.”